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On LightFair
Sometime around the mid-80’s there was a lighting convention titled Light World. I was a Chicago based salesman for the recently formed Cooper Lighting. (Cooper Industries bought McGraw-Edison Company in 1985, which held Halo, McGraw-Edison outdoor and SPI Lighting, and combined those brands with Crouse-Hinds Lighting and later added Lumark and Metalux to be termed Cooper Lighting).
Light World was my first exposure to view the expansiveness of ‘lighting’. It’s one thing to be exposed to the variety of fixture categories within your own organization, but to see hundreds of companies displaying their lighting wares was revelatory for me.
Light World didn’t last very long and in 1989, LightFair (LFI) took over the Light World concept and reigned as the largest lighting convention in the US. 36 years later, I witnessed LightFair 2025 in Las Vegas. I’ve attended every LFI across a variety of venues and have always appreciated the insight into the breadth and diversity of our craft. For most of the history of LFI, the attendees were a crossroads of participants: lighting designers, lighting reps, distributors, architects, engineers, electrical contractors and showrooms. LFI exposed the vast breadth of the industry community.
LFI had their detractors; the venues were very expensive, which dissuaded small players, but also incurred outrageous fees for the largest vendors. Manufacturers saw LFI as an opportunity to get their products exposed to the design community, plus the opportunity to meet with their rep organization. LFI revenues funded IES; which is the bastion of design codes and regulations. As time has worn on, LFI has been under burgeoning criticism for declining attendance and increasing booth fees.
In 2024 Messe Frankfurt (owner of Light and Build in Frankfurt, Germany) bought LFI and quickly held their first US show in Las Vegas, last week. The plan for the future is alternating years between LFI and Light and Build. As such 2026 will have Light and Build and no LFI. 2027 will feature LFI and no Light and Build, etc.
There has been a surge of complaints about LFI 2025. The venue was about half the size of traditional venues for LFI; so, the number of exhibitors was significantly less than previous years. The booth spaces were notably smaller than in the past and the ambient lighting was… dark. Yes, this was a ‘lighting show’ with no lighting. You could walk the aisles with the spill lighting from individual booths, but the overall affect was… dark. (gloomy?)
The opening drum corps was high energy and very well done; and then there was the sound of silence. The energy on the floor was subdued, most booths I walked into had minimal attendance. I did not meet a single lighting rep; which has never happened to me at LFI.
My reaction to LFI Messe? I fear this may have been the last LFI. I bear hope that Messe Frankfurt has bigger plans for 2027, but it would have to be well advertised to bring back attendance.
Lighting is about a $25B industry in the US, I assume the EU Light and Build (L&B) show represents a similar sized lighting industry as well. But Messe combines Lighting and other construction aspects to their Frankfurt show. L&B features Building technologies, Environmental Tech, Food tech, Safety/Security/Fire, Entertainment, and more. L&B is sprawled across multiple large, contiguous convention spaces and it literally requires days to tour everything. Will this work in the US? I don’t know.
I spent 2 days at LFI. I had breakfast and luncheon meetings and toured about 15 booths; that served my business interests. The access to the owners was refreshingly easy, the transit time between booths or rows was minimal; but at the end of my day… I didn’t get an “LFI fix” for me. It was vacuous and unsatisfying. My opinion on LEDucation is bit disparate from most; but I find it to be too limited, way too crowded, a firetrap in its current venue and too small to have privacy in conversations. I’m pulling for a new version of LFI.
If any organization can fix LFI, I’m betting on Messe to do so. To close LFI would be a major loss to the broad lighting community. I’ve spent 40 years in the community and while the products are important; the essence is the community.
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